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Tweeting Feminism: African Feminisms, Digital Counterpublics and The Politics of Gendered Violence
Date
2019-05
Author
Advisors
Makhulu, Anne-Marie
Douglass, Patrice
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Abstract
Tweeting feminism is a digital ethnographic and archival study of the ways in which
Kenyan feminists appropriate Twitter as a site for community building. Firstly, I
explore the mutually enabling modes of gendered violence that have been deeply engrained
in Kenya’s public sphere for the duration of its existence as a nation-state – what
I call a continuum of patriarchal violence. These modes of harm ultimately short-circuit
women’s engagement in mainstream politics and therefore the use of public political
space to contend with harm exacted on women. In the wake of this violence, I then
contend that a “digital feminist counterpublic sphere” emerges – a term which I use
to describe the alternative publics that radical Kenyan feminists have developed to
survive their exclusion from formal public sphere engagement. I argue that in this
online space, radical Kenyan feminists use disrespectability, care, solidarity practices
and archival practices – what I call digital ululations – to generate and strengthen
feminist community.
Type
Honors thesisDepartment
Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist StudiesPermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/21195Citation
Kanyogo, Mumbi (2019). Tweeting Feminism: African Feminisms, Digital Counterpublics and The Politics of Gendered
Violence. Honors thesis, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/21195.Collections
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